[bpowah]

It is a moot question. A simulation is just a name of a thing that is a part of the universe. The current definition covers simple things like thoughts or sentences and some simulations (ex: the Bay Model) are not really distinguishable from the real world. The term simulation may be used to help us think differently about hard-to-get information or help conceptualize some impedance to information but the definition of the term would have to be generalized greatly to apply. In other words, any "discovered" universe-as-simulation (or more more to the point the discovery of the simulation's "operator") would look very unlike any conventional definition of the term "simulation" and would probably just look like "more universe".